New Evidence on the Productive Failure Paradigm: Designing Instruction Based on Students’ Prior Knowledge

• In Event: Multiple Representations and Learning Environments

Abstract

The work on Productive Failure (PF, Kapur, 2009) suggests that students can benefit from first generating multiple representations during collaborative problem-solving, followed by instruction based on student-generated representations. However, so far this approach has usually been compared to Direct Instruction (DI) in a wholescale comparison with several confounds. Therefore, in a quasi-experimental study with 154 10th graders we compared four conditions varying the form of instruction in two DI conditions (DI, DI-S) and the type of support students received when collaboratively generating representations (PF, PF+). We found that, instruction benefits from introducing the concept based on student-generated representations. Moreover, our results indicate that during generation it is more important that students persist in problem-solving than that they receive cognitive support.

Authors

• Katharina Sophia Westermann, Ruhr-Universität Bochum

• Nikol Rummel, Institute of Education - Ruhr-Universität Bochum